Earlier in the year, we announced Gower Women's Surf Society was awarded some money from the 'Be Active Wales' fund from Sport Wales to increase participation of skateboarding in Swansea for women & non-binary folk. On Friday 13th of October 2023, we hosted a small informal launch event of the Gower Women Skate project, a night of skate films, drinks and food.
As the blossoming of our skate scene has grown out of what the community call 'the Slab', we drew on some local Llanelli goodies for this event. Hosted at UN1T 7 in Llanelli, we also had a hot vegan supper cooked up by Rhannu Supper Club.
The line up of films for the night included:
🎥 'A Land for Everyone'
A project and short film by Rachel Sarah following skateboard and adventure photographer Hannah Bailey, and skateboarder, Lyndsay McLaren as they explore the highlands of Scotland.
🎥 'Over Ply Wood'
A film documenting the history of skateboarding in Swansea by Jono Atkinson. Starting from the mid-60's, this film provides a huge amount of context for the relationship between the surf and skate culture around the Gower!
🎥 'Swirl Effect: The GRLSWIRL Story'
A documentary short film telling the story of the rise of GRLSWIRL, a women founded skate collective in Los Angeles who have been a global inspiration. 
We all left feeling inspired and moved by the films and special shout out to volunteer skate capt’n Jess Blake for being an invaluable energy for the Gower Women Skate project. Soon after this event we followed up with our first takeover of Exist Skatepark in Swansea on the 25th of October. This was another sold out success and we were all buzzing afterwards!
We're pleased to announce that we'll be hosting an even bigger film screening event at Taliesin Swansea on Wednesday 17th April 2024! We're also stoked to be collaborating with the Bristol cohort of the Longboard Girls Crew in the UK premiere of their latest film, ‘Beyond Bo(a)rders’.
It's so exciting to have the Gower Women Skate project off the ground, there are more exciting plans in the works for 2024 including an exciting opportunity with Skateboard GB - to be revealed soon!
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